On the (anti-) free speech front this week...

The Weekly Standard features an excellent piece on "interfaith dialogue" -- which is a euphemism for "Muslims talk and we listen, and obey." Writer Nina Shea reveals how the Saudi-based Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is pushing to criminalize criticism of Islam.

I just finished reading Robert Spencer's new and outstanding book Stealth Jihad, which walks readers through this jungle of innocent sounding Muslim acronyms. Alas, Spencer is not optimistic about Western society's ability (or even desire) to fight creeping sharia and censorship.

Up here in Canada, Ezra Levant reprinted a piece of certified "hate speech" (a letter that landed a Christian pastor a "life time speech ban") just to see what would happen. His case was dropped. Why?

He says because he's a) Jewish and b) an articulate, media savvy troublemaker with financial and professional resources that the pastor lacked. So much for "equality under the law."

As Ezra explains, "100% of the Canadian Human Rights Commissions' targets have been white, Christian or conservative. And of course, the conviction rate before the tribunal has been 100%."

Meanwhile, the imam who (unsuccessfully) took Ezra Levant to the Tribunal because he published the Mohammed Cartoons (costing Levant $100,000 in unrecouped legal fees)? He's planning to open... a Center for Free Speech. Clearly "irony" isn't one of the Five Pillars of Islam...

Speaking of Human Rights Commissions: it seems appropriate to recall, in this week of ghoulish anniversaries, that the one-time head of the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission was none other than... mass murdering Marxist Jim Jones.

Jim Jones started out as a highly vocal and effective anti-racist activist -- and ended up killing more African-Americans in one day than the Arkansas KKK did in one hundred years.

Just remember: the employees of Canadian and American Human Rights Commissions are all doing their jobs in the name of "equality" and "fairness" and "diversity", just like Jones was. Make of that what you will.

(Kathy Shaidle blogs at FiveFeetOfFury.com. Her new book about Canada's out of control Human Rights Commissions, The Tyranny of Nice, is now a Conservative Book Club selection.)